BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

South Los Angeles is the last place a person might expect to find a tranquil walkway winding through the canopy of a mixed evergreen and deciduous forest. But 10 or 12 years from now, when the pines and redbud trees of Vermont Miracle Park have grown up past the metal railings of its 11-foot-high elevated walkway, residents of Vermont Knolls will have the chance to disappear into nature—if only for a few minutes.

Occupying just 10,500 square feet, Vermont Miracle Park was designed by Hongjoo Kim Landscape Architects and developed by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT), a nonprofit organization formed in part by then-city council member Eric Garcetti, Honorary ASLA, in 2002 to bring additional green space to underserved neighborhoods like Vermont Knolls, a predominantly African American and Latino community not far from Compton. It’s an area characterized by strip malls, auto body shops, and more than its fair share of vacant lots.

The lot at 81st Street and Vermont Avenue had been vacant since the building there burned down in what Keshia Sexton, the director of organizing at LANLT, refers to as the 1992 Uprising, after the acquittal of Los Angeles police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. Twenty-five years later, the lot has been transformed into much-needed green space, funded through (more…)

FEATURES

Here Comes Everybody
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates’ transformation of a postindustrial New York waterfront to the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge Park took two decades to realize. It was worth the wait.

Always Working
A constructed salt marsh at Pier 1 makes a beautiful defense.

How to Overstuff a Sterile Site
The plantings at Brooklyn Bridge Park follow a strategy of “exaggerated ecology.”

Softening the Sound
Noise reduction in the park takes the form of a mountain.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for December can be found here.

BY ZACH MORTICE

The West Bottoms Flats site is bisected by a narrow street, scaled as an intimate alley with landscaping. Image courtesy BNIM.

In Kansas City, the private sector is helping pick up the tab for green infrastructure in a new residential development.

Since 2010, Kansas City, Missouri, has been subject to a federal consent decree, to begin properly capturing sewage and stormwater before it flows into rivers and streams. It’s a consequence of the city’s overwhelmed combined sewer system, which covers 58 square miles. From 2002 to 2010, the system produced 1,300 illegal overflows, putting approximately 6.4 billion gallons of untreated sewage into waterways annually.

Notably, this is the first time a municipal water federal consent decree has allowed the use of green infrastructure, according to Andy Shively, a special assistant to the City Manager Troy Schulte, who works on issues relating to the consent decree. And the developer-driven West Bottoms Flats mixed-use residential complex designed by Kansas City-based BNIM is shaping up to be an influential test case for ways the private sector can grapple with public sector failure toward water quality goals.